The Solution
Australian cricket divided its workforce, across the nine entities, into three different profiles: Travellers were to be kitted up with Microsoft Surface Pro; Office Workers with SurfacePros and docking stations for connection to monitors; and Analysts with the heavier processing power of HP devices.
CompNow demonstrated the functional and cost benefits of a fleet of pre-imaged Surface Pro devices.
“It was a compelling solution – the Surface Pros are designed for a mobile workforce and to optimise the broad Microsoft platform, centred on Office 365, favoured by Cricket Australia. And the regional scale of CompNow’s service was the best proposal for a national organisation like ours,” Mike says.
CompNow took responsibility for the initial device procurement and, via its managed services, the project’s deployment and ongoing maintenance of the fleet. It leveraged its capacity to set up industrial strength imaging of the machines – processing 30 to 50 at a time. By pushing data off individual machines and onto OneDrive, negligible file transferring time was required during the fast swap outs.
The rollout of the 650 Surface Pro devices was planned over the three months of cricket’s off season. This was to minimise staff disruptions and meet their availabilities for the one-on-one handover & training meetings with CompNow technicians.
As part of the program of work, the nine entities’ individual IT operations were brought into a single, consistent national service desk. “Now, wherever you are in the country, our IT team can connect remotely and fix or triage the problems,” Mike says.
Behind this internal operation is CompNow providing escalated problem resolution and equipment fix/replace to all users nationwide. Under CompNow’s three year Device as a Service contract, a buffer inventory of pre-imaged Surface Pros are warehoused for CA. CompNow manages the warranty process, fix/replace & training to minimise user disruption. “CompNow guarantees us same day/next day service anywhere in Australia. Their engineers know what they’re doing and they are all very personable with our staff,” Mike says.